Characterization and Design of Millimeter-Wave Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Components, and Broadband Low-Noise Amplifiers

摘要

This thesis focuses on the characterization and design of millimeter-wave CMOS components and broadband low-noise amplifiers. In the design of millimeter-wave circuits, accurate characterization of on-wafer active and passive components isof great importance. In this thesis, several well-known de-embedding techniques, which are used to characterize on-wafer devices, are reviewed, and their accuracies are investigated. A new de-embedding method for extracting the high frequency characteristics of a device-under-test is presented and applied to test structures manufactured in 28-nm CMOS technology. Excellent agreement is achieved between the simulated and experimental data up to 110 GHz, indicating that the proposed technique is an effective tool in characterization of mm-wave on-wafer components. Furthermore, design of active and passive components, which are used in the millimeter-wave low-noise amplifier circuit, is presented. Layout optimization techniques to improve the high frequency performances of these components areexplained in detail. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performances of individual components. Finally, several issues concerning millimeter-wave low-noise amplifier design are discussed, such as stability, noise figure and different amplifier topologies. A three-stage full W-band low-noise amplifier achieving a flat gain of 15 dB and 5.5 dB noise figure over a very wideband is designed. Extensive simulation results showing the performance of the amplifier are presented.